Missed movie jokes

Time for something a little lighter. Here’s 22 people admitting that they missed a joke in a movie and only figured it out years later. For example:

When describing Austin Power’s ‘Mojo,’ Dr. Evil has a line like, ‘What the French call a certain… I don’t know what.’ I always thought the joke was that Dr. Evil was just being stupid. I didn’t learn until much later in life that this is the literal definition of ‘Je ne sais quoi.’ Upon a recent rewatch, that was probably my favorite joke in the entire franchise.

See them at https://www.buzzfeed.com/alliehayes/movies-jokes-people-missed-reddit.

The United States in a new kind of collective order

Why have the number and severity of wars dropped noticeably in the past century? In the past, one state could gain power until it was a risk to all the states near it, so all the states near it ganged up to keep it under control, repeat ad infinitum. But not for the past several decades:

This post will focus on what I do think is the US position in the international order, although the focus here is going to be somewhat less on the United States’ role within what I am going to call the ‘status quo coalition’ than it is on the coalition itself. Because the existence and breadth of this coalition is really unusual and thus remarkable; indeed it may be indicative of broader shifts in how interstate relationships work in an industrial/post-industrial world where institutions and cultural attitudes are beginning, slowly, to catch up to the new realities our technology has created.

(…)

Globally we can see the failure of balancing. Despite the fact that the first real challenger to the US-led world order since 1989 has emerged in the form of the People’s Republic of China, the PRC has the same meager list of allies in 2023 that it had in 1953: North Korea. Russia likewise has a single European client state (Belarus); Russian friendship with Hungary has merely bought neutrality, not aid.

(…)

Meanwhile, the United States’ list of allies is preposterous. Of the top 10 countries by nominal GDP – a decent enough measure of potential military capabilities – one is the United States and six more (3. Japan, 4. Germany, 6. UK, 7. France, 8. Italy and 9. Canada) are close allies of the United States. Of the next ten, five more (South Korea, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, and Turkey) are formal US treaty allies, one is pointedly neutral (Switzerland) and three more (Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia) have either extensive economic ties with the United States, significant military ties with the United States or both.

Why have things changed so drastically? https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coalition/. 8,000 words and worth it; Steven Pinker wrote an entire book about how we got to where we are (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature.)

Medical mystery

Seated next to a radiologist, Thomas P. Trezona scoured the images of his CT scan, dreading the thing he was sure he would find: evidence of pancreatic cancer, the same disease that had killed his mother. Given his age, sex and family history, that was the most likely explanation for the violent abdominal pain, nausea and rapid weight loss that in July 2021 hijacked the life of the retired surgical oncologist.

To Trezona’s enormous relief the scan showed no sign of cancer. His internist suspected he was reacting to grain in his diet, while blood tests performed after the scan suggested a rare, chronic gastrointestinal disorder.

The cause of Trezona’s debilitating symptoms, confirmed nearly two months later following surgery, turned out to be none of those things…

It took a doctor with many medical friends two months to find out what the problem was: an ingested wire from a metal barbecue-grill brush. An estimated 1,700 people suffered the same problem from 2002 through 2014.

https://wapo.st/43kc3fn (2,000 words; should be free to all). More medical mystery stories at wapo.st/medicalmysteries.

AIDS in Africa

Amazing progress: more than 25 million lives have been saved.

Twenty years ago, HIV/AIDS was a death sentence in this region (sub-Saharan Africa). The cemeteries were full every weekend – adults cut down in their prime; children dying without access to treatment. The virus permeated every aspect of life.

Today, the HIV epidemic has faded from the headlines. It is considered by many to be a manageable condition like diabetes, thanks in no small part to an extraordinarily successful US public health initiative, that few in America may have heard of.

President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2003 was dominated by Iraq, a significant moment in the lead-up to the US’s catastrophic invasion of the country.

But few could have predicted the impact of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)

…

Despite being one of the world’s poorest countries, Lesotho is a success story.

In 2005, according to UNAIDS data, nearly 20,000 people in the tiny country died of HIV. That number has been reduced four-fold.

The country has reached a key milestone set out by UNAIDS: 90% of people living with HIV know their status; 90% with confirmed HIV are on treatment and 90% of those on treatment are virally suppressed.

About 2,000 words: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/11/africa/aids-epidemic-crossroads-africa-intl-cmd/index.html